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thedrifter
03-17-09, 10:02 AM
March 16, 2009
Marine was vet before 'Forgotten War'

By RON SIMON
News Journal

MANSFIELD -- Jerry Shasky, 75, a Marine veteran of the Korean War era, says the term "Forgotten War" is a perfect fit for his time of service.

"When I came home friends would ask me where I had been," Shasky said. " 'We haven't seen you for awhile.' "

But the unkindest cut of all came when he attempted to join a veteran's organization.

"I was simply told that they didn't want me because we didn't win," he said.

Shasky never made it to Korea when he joined the Marines in1953. He expected to go, but the Corps had other plans. Of the 97 recruits in his basic training class at Parris Island, only 49 made it through training.

A member of the Civil Air Patrol and the 164th Fighter Group of the Ohio Air National Guard, Shasky was already a veteran when he joined the Corps.

"I was just 20, but I was the old man," he said. "I was made the fourth squad leader. It was tough. You had to have a sense of humor to get through it. But I figured that if so many others before me could do it, so could I."

Nearly every member of Shasky's graduating class went on to advanced infantry training. He and a handful of others were sent to other schools.

He was assigned to a basic aviation school in Jacksonville, Fla. He wound up second in his class.

"They gave me a choice, and I took electronics," he said.

After further training, he was a radar operator and technician assigned to the Marine air base at Cherry Point, N.C. For two years he would be part of a special Marine aviation group that flew Marine Skyraiders up and down the East Coast.

"It was the Cold War then, and our job was to make sure nobody invaded the East Coast."

The Skyraider, a prop plane, looked like it was pregnant, Shasky said. That was because of the radar equipment that hung from the plane's belly.

After two years as a regular, Shasky spent two more years in the Marine reserves and got on with his civilian career. He spent more than 47 years with Gorman Rupp Co., rising from a maintenance worker to the company's chief administrative engineer.

In high school, Shasky joined the Civil Air Patrol in the late 1940s.

He said the CAP was a U.S. Army Air Force auxiliary unit that employed civilian pilots during World War II to patrol the American coasts in search of enemy submarines. In peacetime, he said, the unit's main job was search and rescue. Not much of that was needed in the Midwest.

After graduation in 1950, he joined the Ohio Air National Guard and was an ordnance specialist, arming the machine guns, bombs and rockets carried by the unit's fighter planes.

He recalls helping rescue a pilot whose plane made a belly landing on a field near Grayling, Mich., during one summer camp.

When he tried to join the regular Air Force during the Korean War, he was turned down because he wore glasses.

That was not a problem with the Marine Corps.

A brother-in-law, Robert Hutchison of Mansfield, was a Marine veteran of Korea.

Shasky said the Army and the Air Force had, in his opinion, a poor record in Korea.

"I wanted to join an outfit that knew how to fight," he said. "I was a kid, and that's how I was."

Shasky married Rosemary in 1952. After his service time was over, the couple had two children, Laurie Kathleen Leedy, of Bellville, and Steven Lowell Shasky, of Possum Run Road, who operates a business called Steve's Ski System.

Not long after it was founded, Shasky joined the Korean War Veterans Association and joined in the drive to have a Korean War Memorial built in Mansfield's Central Park. Hutchison designed the memorial.

Shasky handles the group's newsletter and was present last Thursday when a flag was raised in front of the Richland County Administration Building to honor the veterans of that "Forgotten War."

"Most of us are between 75 and 85, and our life span may be over in 10 years. A lot of our members were also veterans of World War II," Shasky said.

E-mail Ron Simon at rsimon@ neo.rr.com or call 419-756-7269.

Ellie